Cob Jockey

On Sunday, Mary finally made it down to visit Disco at home! She hadn't seen him in person since her trip to Lisa's in May.

Part of the reason she wanted to come down is she couldn't wait a moment longer to give me my Christmas present, which is a backpack cooler with a tap on it, hahaha. Going to be rolling in style for horse shows next year!

Not that my barnmates aren't willing to help me with him, but nobody gets me and my intentions for Disco the way Mary does! It was great to have her there as a second set of hands, and also to sponge up her baby training knowledge.

Disco: "Who is this lady and what is she doing?"

See in college, Mary and I both took a class in halter breaking baby horses for outside clients, only our year they tried to give us all Mustangs from Ewing...but Ewing had a Strangles outbreak right before we were supposed to get our weanlings. Mary ended up with a sweet little QH foal for an outside client, and I ended up with a 3 year old Mustang straight off the range.

Mary ended up getting her baby, Elmo, not only halter broken but also wearing a Thoroughbred exercise saddle, trailer loading, jumping into the feed cart on command, and ground driving literally all over campus by the time he was not quite a year old. Meanwhile, I ended up able to do almost nothing with my Mustang, who was later deemed not adoptable by Ewing.

So while we both got the classroom education, she is much more experienced with getting baby horses to be solid citizens than I am, so I appreciate all the help she gives me!

We started out in the indoor, where she wanted to introduce the lunge whip and introduce him to the idea of a human having control of and moving his body even when he wasn't on a line. She wanted him to start to understand the correlation between the whip position and being asked to walk, trot and whoa. He was...not fussed about it, lol.

We also walked him over raised poles for the first time and worked on trotting in hand with a whip behind him (not that he needs the encouragement, but to get him used to it for future lunging) and he did great with both.

With his baby patience for arena games waning, we put him back into his stall for some grooming time. Mary decided to tackle his mane, which to this point I've suffered from inertia on learning how to deal with. It is THICK and textured and OMG what am I going to do with this, lol.

Ahhhhhhhhh

I'm starting to have mixed feelings on mane pulling (story for another day) so she used a new thinning and shortening comb I just got while I stood next to him (he was fake tied to the wall) and distracted him. 

It turned out really good! I'll probably try the same comb on Connor this winter and will see how I feel about braiding that in the spring, which was always my biggest complaint with the Solocomb I used to have.

He really looks like a lot more of an adult with his shortened mane. At least, you can see glimmers of the adult he'll be someday here and there.

I love having my best wingman so close!